Grades are in for the semester: I got an A in Chemistry (4.0) and a B- in Physics (2.7). Both courses, as it turns out, were not curved (which honestly surprised me in Physics... I guess half the class has a C+ or lower in the end after all).
The A is great, but wasn't a surprise at all really. The B- is awful but... not a C? How awful it really ends up being depends a lot on how much I can get on track before the MCAT, and whether I can make sure all my other grades become 4.0s - especially Organic Chemistry in the Fall, which is supposed to be another "hard" course. If I can get an A in everything, that included, I can explain this semester of Physics away as "they should have said I needed to know how to do integrals...". Then I only have a mild problem. If I can't get an A in Organic, I have a serious problem.
Either way, medical schools will look really poorly on a B-, so my score on the MCAT becomes super-important.
The really annoying thing is that I genuinely don't know exactly where I stand. While neither class was curved, the Chemistry tests were practically handed out beforehand and were easy enough that the course may as well have just been curved up. I feel like I still got everything though... would I have gotten an A if that class was as hard as it was when I took it as a real undergraduate? I have no clue.
And Physics was hard, but without understanding integrals this semester I really was trying to get it done without half the tools. Should I be happy, or even impressed, that I managed to do well enough to avoid failing the course altogether given that situation? Or should I get hung up on an "awful" grade (from the med-school admissions point of view, at least).
... I don't know.
Either way, I still did well enough that there's no sense in quitting. I might as well keep pushing on, and I'll just see what happens.
In other news, it looks like my Biology course is a go. We still have no books up at the store, but the course got a room assigned to it, and is officially non-cancelled. I'm going to try and buy the book for Bio 220 (which I'm taking in the second half of summer), and I'll just hope the books are the same. It wouldn't be all that surprising if they were, and I'll need this book anyways eventually.
